Chapter XI - The Calculation of Copernicus

Summary

I shall commence with the incomparable Copernicus, the successful reviver of what Gellibrand calls the “noble hypothesis of the motion of the Earth,” whom all the lovers of astronomy have hitherto followed, and will doubtless continue to do. Having long contemplated and admired a philosophy so sublime and so worthy of a Christian, I thus expressed my aversion to the puerile fictions of the pagan Ptolemy:—

Why should'st thou try, O Ptolemy, to pass

Thy narrow-bounded world for aught divine?

Why should thy poor machine presume to claim

A noble maker? Can a narrow space

Call for eternal hands? Will thy mansion

Suit great Jove? or can he from such a seat

Prepare his lightnings for the trembling earth?

Fair are the gods you frame forsooth! nor vain

Would be their fears if giant hands assailed them.

Such little world were well the infant sport

Of Jove in darker times; such toys in truth

His cradle might befit, nor would the work

In after years have e'er been perfected,

When harlot smiles restrained his riper powers.

These are your fancied gods, your paltry dreams;

And worthy them is all you raise around;

The temples that you build are amply large,

Thy heavens are suited to a Jove like thine. […]